Mongolia Calling!

My old friend Bari (we met about 27 years ago at Lama Foundation) and his new wife from Mongolia, Urnaa, came to visit, set up and blessed the ger, and spent the night. Her many insights and affinity for the lifestyle greatly added to my continuing education in Mongolian cloud houses.

Video of the blessing in Mongolian...

The weather, very warm for the first day of March - about 60º - makes mud still a real problem, but because of the cold nights, at least it's melting fairly slowly.

The road to my driveway...

I've been diligently keeping the dug footings for the new addition dry after chipping out the accumulated snow and ice. The boards over the trench let me easily throw a tarp over the whole thing when snow or rain threaten (like today).

We've made a list of materials for the next step - creating the forms for the concrete and all the structural, plumbing, and electrical doodads that will be a part of it.

Ice to Mud to Ice to Mud...

I finally put in the building permit application on Monday, and the zoning clearance appeared at the top of our driveway Tuesday, less than 24 hours later. Hopefully with the construction slump - and this being February - the permit process will be faster than usual, too.

Zoning clearance!

Guess somebody changed their mind...
A contrail halo appeared as I began setting up the ger wall.
Just having the wall up will keep some of the dogtracks off the deck.

Dogs in...Dogs out...

Cool, huh?